TIPPING
“There are several ways of calculating the tip after a meal. I find that the best is to divide the bill by the height of the waiter. Thus, a bill of $12.00 brought by a six foot waiter calls for a $2.00 tip.”
TRAVEL TIPS
“If you’re traveling alone, beware of seatmates who, by way of starting a conversation, make remarks like, ‘I just have to talk to someone—my teeth are spying on me’ or ‘Did you know that squirrels are the devil’s oven mitts?’”
“Public telephones in Europe are like our pinball machines. They are primarily a form of entertainment and a test of skill rather than a means of communication.”
HOTELS
“Generally speaking, the length and grandness of a hotel’s name are an exact opposite reflection of its quality. Thus the Hotel Central will prove to be a clean, pleasant place in a good part of town, and the Hotel Royal Majestic-Fantastic will be a fleabag next to a topless bowling alley.”
HATS
“Someone you like is wearing an ugly hat, and she asks you to give her your honest opinion of it: ‘What a lovely chapeau! But if I may make one teensy suggestion? If it blows off, don’t chase it.’”
Pigs killed off the dodo bird.
STRANGE LAWSUITS
These days, it seems that people will sue each other over practically anything. Here are a few real-life examples of unusual legal battles.
THE PLAINTIFF: Frank Zaffere, a 44-year-old Chicago lawyer
THE DEFENDANT: Maria Dillon, his 21-year-old ex-fiance
THE LAWSUIT: In June 1992—about two months before they were supposed to get married—Dillon broke off the engagement. Zaffere responded by suing her for $40,310.48 to cover his “lost courting expenses.” In a letter sent to Dillon, he wrote, “I am still willing to marry you on the conditions herein below set forth: 1) We proceed with our marriage within 45 days of the date of this letter; 2) You confirm [that you]...will forever be faithful to me; 3) You promise...that you will never lie to me again about anything.” He closed with: “Please feel free to call me if you have any questions or would like to discuss any of the matters discussed herein. Sincerely, Frank.”
“He’s trying to...make me say, ‘OK Frank, I’ll marry you,’” said Dillon. “But...I can’t imagine telling my children as a bedtime story that Mommy and Daddy got married because of a lawsuit.”
THE VERDICT: The case was dismissed.
THE PLAINTIFF: 27-year-old Scott Abrams
THE DEFENDANTS: The owners and managers of his apartment building
THE LAWSUIT: During an electrical storm in 1991, Abrams was sitting on the ledge of the apartment-building roof with his feet in a puddle of water. He was hit by lightning and suffered a cardiac arrest; fortunately, he was revived by a rescue squad. But in 1993 he filed a $2 million lawsuit charging the defendants with negligence. His reason: “They should have provided signs and brighter paint.”
THE VERDICT: Pending.
Talk-talk: Americans make more than 350 billion phone calls a year.
THE PLAINTIFF: Ronald Askew, a 50-year-old banker from Santa Ana, California
THE DEFENDANT: His ex-wife, Bonnette
THE LAWSUIT: In 1991, after more than a decade of marriage, Bonnette admitted to her husband that although she loved him, she’d never really found him sexually attractive. He sued her for fraud, saying he “wouldn’t have married her had he known her feelings.”
THE VERDICT: Incredibly, he won. The jury awarded him $242,000 in damages.
THE PLAINTIFF: The family of 89-year-old Mimi Goldberg, a Jewish woman who died in 1991
THE DEFENDANT: The Associated Memorial Group, a Hawaiian firm that ran nine funeral homes
THE LAWSUIT: In 1993 Goldberg’s body was shipped from the Nuuanu Mortuary in Hawaii to California. When the casket was opened at an Oakland synagogue, “the remains of a dissected fetal pig in a plastic bag” were found resting next to the body. A mortuary representative said the pig had been put there accidentally by an employee “whose wife was taking a class requiring the dissection of fetal pigs.” The woman’s family, horrified because Jewish religious law specifically bans pork, sued.
THE VERDICT: The family won $750,000. In addition, the funeral home was ordered to make a donation to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial, and print an apology in leading West Coast newspapers.
THE PLAINTIFF: Dimitri K. Sleem, a 38-year-old Yale graduate
THE DEFENDANT: Yale University
THE LAWSUIT: In April 1993, an old college friend called Sleem to read him the entry listed under his name in the 1993 Yale alumni directory. It said: “I have come to terms with my homosexuality and the reality of AIDS in my life. I am at peace.” Sleem—who didn’t have AIDS, wasn’t gay, and was married with four children—filed a $5 million libel suit against Yale.
THE VERDICT: Still pending. Meanwhile, Yale hired a handwriting expert to find out who submitted the false statement.
In New Orleans, the soil is too wet for regular burials—so the dead are buried above ground.
PRIMETIME PROVERBS
TV comments about everyday Ufe. From PrimeTime Proverbs, by Jack Mingo and John Javna.
ON GROWING UP
Robin [gazing at a female criminal’s legs]: “Her legs sort of remind me of Catwoman’s.”
Batman: “You’re growing up Robin, but remember: In crimefighting, always keep your sights high.”
—“Batman”
ON LIFE
[As she folds her son’s clothes] “There’s got to be more to life that sittin’ here watchin’ ‘Days of Our Lives’ and foldin’ your Fruit of the Looms.”
—Mama,
“Mama’s Family”
Coach Ernie Pantusso:
“How’s life, Norm?”
Norm Peterson: “Ask somebody who’s got one.”
—“Cheers”
ON PSYCHIATRY
TV interviewer: “You mean, you ask forty dollars an hour and you guarantee nothing?”
Bob Hartley: “Well, I validate.”
—“The Bob Newhart Show”
ON MENTAL HEALTH
Bob Hartley: “Howard, what do you do when you’re upset?”
Howard Borden: “Well, I’ve got a method—it always works. I go into a dark room, open up all the windows, take off all my clothes, and eat something cold. No, wait a minute, I do that when I’m overheated. When I have a problem I just go to pieces.”
—“The Bob Newhart Show”
[To an old flame] “Someday your Mr. Right will come along. And when he does, he’s gonna be wearing a white coat and a butterfly net.”
—Louie DePalma,
“Taxi”
ON MASCULINITY
Ward Cleaver: “You know, Wally, shaving is just one of the outward signs of being a man. It’s more important to try to be a man inside first.”
Wally Cleaver: “Yeah sure, Dad.”
—“Leave It to Beaver”
Look out below: An average of 14 people jump off the Golden Gate Bridge every year.
THE CURSE OF KING TUT
After Tutankhamen’s tomb was unearthed in 1922, a number of people associated with the discovery died mysterious deaths. Was it coincidence...or was it a curse?
BACKGROUND King Tutankhamen reigned from about 1334 to 1325 B.C., at the height of ancient Egypt’s glory. The “boy king” was only about 9 when he was crowned, and died mysteriously at the age of 18 or 19. He was buried beside other pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings, near the Nile River at Luxor, the capital of ancient Egypt.
THE DISCOVERY
King Tutankhamen’s tomb remained undisturbed for more than 3,000 years until it was unearthed in November 1922 by Howard Carter, an amateur archeologist commissioned by the English nobleman Lord Carnarvon to find it. Carter’s discovery was due largely to luck; having exhausted a number of other leads, he finally decided to dig in a rocky patch of ground between the tombs of three other pharaohs. Three feet under the soil he found the first of a
series of 16 steps, which led down to a sealed stone door. Markings on the door confirmed that it was a royal tomb. Realizing what he had discovered, Carter ordered the steps buried again, and wired Lord Carnarvon in London to join him.
Three weeks later, Carnarvon arrived and digging resumed. The first stone door was opened, revealing a 30-foot-long passageway leading to a second stone door. Carter opened the second door and, peeking into the darkness with the light of a single candle, was greeted by an amazing sight—two entire rooms stuffed with priceless gold artifacts that had not seen the light of day for more than 30 centuries. The room was so crammed with statues, chariots, furniture, and other objects that it took two full months to catalog and remove items in the first room alone. Tutankhamen’s body lay in a solid gold coffin in the next room; the gold coffin was itself encased inside three other coffins, which rested inside a huge golden shrine that took up nearly the entire room.
Beer wasn’t sold in cans until 1935.
The discovery of the site was hailed as “the greatest find in the annals of archeology.” Unlike other tombs, Tutankhamen’s was almost completely undisturbed by graverobbers; its hundreds of artifacts provided a glimpse of ancient Egyptian cultural life that had never been seen before.
THE CURSE
But unearthing the treasures may have been a dangerous move—soon after the Tut discovery was announced, rumors about a curse on his tomb’s defilers began to circulate. They weren’t taken seriously—until Lord Carnarvon came down with a mysterious fever and died.
The curse gained credibility when word came from Lord Carnarvon’s home in England at 1:50 a.m.—the exact moment of Lord Carnarvon’s death—that his favorite dog had suddenly collapsed and died. And at precisely the same moment, Cairo was plunged into darkness, due to an unexplainable power failure.
Other Deaths: Over the next several years, a series of people associated with the Tut excavation died unexpectedly, often under mysterious circumstances. The dead in 1923 alone included Lord Carnarvon’s brother, Col. Aubrey Herbert; Cairo archaeologist Achmed Kamal, and American Egyptologist William Henry Goodyear.
• The following year, British radiologist Archibald Reed died on his way to Luxor, where he planned to X-ray Tut’s still-unopened coffin. Oxford archeologist Hugh Eveyln-White, who had dug in the necropolis at Thebes, also died in 1924.
• Edouard Neville, Carter’s teacher, as well as George Jay-Gould, Carnarvon’s friend, papyrus expert Bernard Greenfell, American Egyptologist Aaron Ember, and the nurse who attended to Lord Carnarvon all died in 1926. Ember’s death was particularly spooky—he was attempting to rescue from his burning house a manuscript he had worked on for years: The Egyptian Book of the Dead.
• In 1929 Lord Carnarvon’s wife, Lady Almina, died, as did John Maxwell, the Earl’s friend and executor, and Carter’s secretary, Richard Bethell, who was found dead in bed, apparently from circulatory failure, at the age of 35.
If you keep your goldfish in a dark room, they’ll turn white.
THE AFTERMATH
Fallout from the rumors of the curse continued for years, as did the string of mysterious deaths.
• As accounts of the deaths circulated, hysteria spread. In England, hundreds of people shipped everything they had that was even remotely Egyptian to the British Museum—including an arm from a mummy.
• The popularity of the curse legend led to a series of classic horror films: “The Mummy” (1932), starring Boris Karloff, and “The Mummy’s Hand” (1940) and three sequels starring Lon Chaney, Jr.—“The Mummy’s Tomb” (1942), “The Mummy’s Ghost” and “The Mummy’s Curse” (both 1944).
LAST WORDS
• Was the curse for real? Many prominent people insisted that it wasn’t; they argued that the mortality rates of people associated with the Tutankhamen discovery and other finds were no higher than that of the general public. Dr. Gamal Mehrez, Director-General of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, disputed the curse in an interview made several years after the discovery of Tut’s tomb. “All my life,” he said, “I have had to deal with pharaonic tombs and mummies. I am surely the best proof that it is all coincidence.” Four weeks later he dropped dead of circulatory failure, as workers were moving Tutankhamen’s gold mask for transport to London.
• For what it’s worth, Lord Carnarvon’s son, the sixth Earl of Carnarvon, accepts the curse at face value. Shortly after the fifth earl’s burial, a woman claiming psychic powers appeared at Highclere Castle and warned the sixth earl, “Don’t go near your father’s grave! It will bring you bad luck!” The wary earl heeded her advice and never visited the grave. In 1977 he told an NBC interviewer that he “neither believed nor disbelieved” the curse—but added that he would “not accept a million pounds to enter the tomb of Tutankhamen.”
Profound thought: “It’s a question of whether we’re going to go forward with the future, or past to the back.”—Dan Quayle
King Louis XIX ruled France for about 15 minutes.
(JUNK) FOOD
FOR THOUGHT
Background info on some of the foods you love—and some you love to hate.
CHEEZ WHIZ. Invented by Kraft laboratory technicians in 1951. According to The Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, they were looking for a cheese product that wouldn’t clump or “disintegrate into ugly, oily wads of dairy fat glop,” like real cheese did when heated. It was first test-marketed to housewives in 1952; they found 1,304 different uses for it.
TANG. Fresh from the success of its decade-long struggle to get consumers to give instant coffee a try, in 1955 General Foods decided to try the same tactic with orange juice. Its goal: To make a “fruit-flavored breakfast companion to Instant Maxwell House coffee.” It took 10 years to perfect the recipe, but one advantage of the delay was that three months after it made its nationwide debut in 1965, NASA announced that Tang would be used to feed the Gemini astronauts in space. General Foods played the endorsement for all it was worth. The orangy powder never bit into orange juice sales, but it was still a hit—at least until Americans lost their taste for both the space program and artificial foods in the 1980s.
PRETZELS. According to legend, pretzels were invented by an Italian monk during the Middle Ages because he wanted something he could give to children who memorized their prayers. He rolled dough into a long rope and shaped it so it looked like arms folded in prayer. He called his salty treats pretioles, Latin for “little gift.”
MACARONI & CHEESE. During the Depression, the Kraft company tried to market a low-priced cheddar cheese powder to the American public—but the public wouldn’t buy it. One St. Louis salesman, looking for a way to unload his allotment of the stuff, tied individual packages to macaroni boxes and talked grocers on his route into selling them as one item, which he called “Kraft Dinners.” When the company found out how well they were selling, it made the Dinners an official part of its product line.
Bathroom news: Franklin Roosevelt thought up the name “United Nations” in the shower.
THE GODZILLA QUIZ
Here’s a multiple-choice quiz to find out how much you really know about filmdom’s most famous dinosaur. Answers are on page 662.
1. Godzilla first lumbered out of the ocean in a 1954 film titled Gojira. The dino-monster was awakened from a million-year slumber by A-bomb testing underseas and went on a rampage, destroying Tokyo, wreaking havoc with his radioactive breath. In 1956, the movie was brought to the U.S. as Godzilla, King of Monsters (“Makes King Kong Look Like a Midget!”). How did they adapt it for American audiences?
A)They made it seem as though Godzilla was fighting for the U.S. during World War II.
B)They inserted footage of Godzilla destroying New York City and Washington, D.C. as well.
C)They added Raymond Burr, casting him as a hospitalized reporter who remembers the whole incident as a flashback.
2. The first Japanese sequel to Gojira was made in 1955. But when this flick finally made it to the U.S. in 1959, it didn’t mention Godzilla in the
title. What was it called, and why?
A)The Monster vs. the Maiden; the studio tried to make it sexier.
B)The Rockin’ Monster; rock ’n’ roll movies were hot.
C)Gigantis; it was illegal to use the name Godzilla.
3. In the 1964 flick, Godzilla vs. Megalon, Godzilla saves the world from the Seatopians, an evil alien race that plans to take over using two secret weapons—Gaigan and Megalon. How would you describe this evil pair?
A)A King Kong-like ape and a giant poisonous frog.
B)A giant cockroach and a robot with a buzz saw in his stomach.
C)A giant pickle and a Richard Nixon look-alike.
4. Godzilla vs. the Thing was released in 1964. What Thing did Godzilla fight?
A)A giant rabbit.
B)A giant moth.
C)A giant spider.
Breakfast treat: In Colonial America, kids ate popcorn with cream and sugar for breakfast.
5. How did Godzilla celebrate his 20th anniversary in 1974?
A)He fought a Godzilla robot from outer space.
B)He saved the world from a giant alien grasshopper.
C)He made an appearance on the “The Tonight Show.”
6. Godzilla on Monster Island was released in 1971. The plot: Earth is invaded again. This time it’s giant cockroaches from outer space, using monsters to do their dirty work. They’ve got Gaigan (the monster in Godzilla vs. Megalon) and Ghidrah. Who’s Ghidrah?
A)Godzilla’s mother-in-law.
B)A giant anteater.
C)A three-headed dragon.
7. In 1972 a scientist discovers a growing mass in a polluted lake. He wonders if it’s a giant tadpole...but no! It’s a new monster named Hedora. What will Godzilla be fighting this time?
A)The Smog Monster—a 400-foot blob of garbage.
B)The Phlegm Monster—a 2-ton ball of mucus.
C)The Sludge Monster—A 60-foot-wide hunk of waste.
Uncle John’s Legendary Lost Bathroom Reader Page 29
